LITERATURE THAT REFERS TO “ACID RAIN” AS “CORROSIVE DOWNPOUR”

. When the pH of rainwater is low or acidic, it is referred to as acid rain. The term ‘acid rain’, for example, in climate change or other environmental literature, is an established term. Due to the double synonymisation of two words, ‘acid’ to ‘corrosive’ and ‘rain’ to ‘downpour’, the non-standard term or ‘tortured phrase’ (TP) ‘corrosive downpour’ has arisen in some literature. To better appreciate the volume and extent of this TP, a search (29 October 2025) was performed on Google Scholar, revealing about 132 results. After filtering out duplicates and theses, from among accessible literature, 91 documents published between 2015 and 2024 were examined, including 63 papers, 13 book chapters, and 15 proceedings papers: 65 had a DOI, 58 were open access, and the majority (62 documents) had an affiliation in India. None of the documents have been retracted. The highest incidence of the TP ‘corrosive downpour’ was in documents published by Springer Nature (n = 7). While most (93%) documents had only a few (1–3) instances of this TP, and while a large number (49%) had accrued zero citations as of May 2025, suggesting their lack of practical use for citation, some documents with this TP had high citation counts, suggesting their influence. This TP – a de facto error – would benefit from being corrected in any literature that includes it.